Keith Runcorn

Stanley Keith Runcorn (born November 19, 1922 in Southport (Lancashire) , † December 5, 1995 in San Diego ) was a British geophysicist. Among other things, he dealt with paleomagnetism and found early evidence of plate tectonics .

life and work

Runcorn initially studied from 1940 with a state scholarship as an engineer at the University of Cambridge (Gaius and Gonville College). After graduating in 1943, he worked in radar development ( Royal Radar Establishment , RRE). In 1946 he became a lecturer at Manchester University , where he turned to geophysics (exploration of the earth's magnetic field) under the influence of PMS Blackett , for which purpose Blackett had constructed a very sensitive astatic magnetometer. For his dissertation, he demonstrated by measurements in English coal mines that the earth's magnetic field increased with depth (which underpinned the then dominant dynamo theory of Elsasser and Bullard and spoke against an alternative theory by Blackett himself). In 1950 Runcorn moved to Cambridge and began paleomagnetic measurements, as did Blackett, who had moved to Imperial College. In Cambridge, Runcorn set up a geomagnetic research group that, in addition to palaeomagnetism, also dealt with, for example, the magnetohydrodynamics of the Earth's core and other questions. In 1956 he moved to the University of Newcastle , where he was a physics professor and retired in 1988. He then taught three months a year at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks (as Sydney Chapman Professor of Physics ).

He was robbed in 1995 in his hotel room in San Diego.

Runcorn was the first to find evidence of periodic polarity reversals in the earth's magnetic field (these themselves were discovered by Bernard Brunhes in France around 1905 ).

Runcorn's investigations into the migration of the poles from paleomagnetic measurements in the 1950s provided early support for Alfred Wegener's continental drift theory , which had long been viewed with skepticism. He received clear indications from the deviations in the polar migration curves, which resulted from the comparison of rocks in North America and Europe, he received in 1956. This was subsequently confirmed by data from other continents of Runcorn's group, which Blackett's group (who did not publicize until 1960 advocated continental drift, but had been a supporter of the theory since the early 1950s). Runcorn had to overcome resistance at the time, for example there were heated debates with opponents of continental drift such as the American paleomagnetologist John Graham. At about the same time (1956) as Runcorn, Edward A. Irving (* 1927) from Blackett's group found early evidence of continental drift from paleomagnetic measurements of rocks in Scotland.

In the mid-1960s he began to shift his field of interest to the lunar rock samples brought back from the Apollo mission, investigated their magnetic properties and came to the conclusion that the moon must have had a magnetic field in the past. He interpreted small magnetic anomalies that satellites observed near the moon as relics of older magnetizations combined with a pole shift of the previously existing moon magnetic field due to impacts. He also dealt with convection and magnetic field formation in other planets.

He also dealt, for example, with the determination of wind directions from old sedimentary rocks, the influence of earthquakes on magnetic pole migration, variations in day length from coral fossils, determination of earth currents from abandoned cable laying in the Pacific, causes of polarity events .

In 1995 he received the Emil Wiechert Medal , 1984 the gold medal of the Royal Astronomical Society , 1987 the Alfred Wegener Medal of the European Geophysical Union, 1969 the Charles Chree Prize of the Institute of Physics , the John Adam Fleming Medal of the American Geophysical Union (1983) , the Vetlesen Prize from Columbia University, and the Napier Shaw Prize from the Royal Meteorological Society (1959).

In 1965 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society and in 1980 the Indian National Academy of Science and the Papal Academy of Sciences (where he contributed to the official papal rehabilitation of Galileo Galilei ). He was an honorary member of the Dutch, Norwegian and Bavarian Academy of Sciences (1990) and the Royal Society of New South Wales.

From 1991 to 1993 he was the scientific committee for the Biosphere II project in Arizona.

The asteroid (4570) Runcorn was named after him. He is also the namesake for the Runcorn Glacier in Antarctica.

Fonts

• Editor with LH Ahrens, K. Rankama: Physics and chemistry of the Earth , 1956
• Editor: Methods and techniques in geophysics , 1966
• Published by: Continental drift , Academic Press 1962
• Published in: International dictionary of geophysics: seismology, geomagnetism, aeronomy, oceanography, geodesy, gravity, marine geophysics, meteorology, the earth as a planet and its evolution , 1967
• Editor: Mantles of the earth and terrestrial planets , NATO Advanced Study Institute, 1967
• Editor with DW Collinson, KM Creer: Methods in palaeomagnetism: Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Palaeomagnetic Methods , 1967
• Published in: Palaeogeophysics , NATO Advanced Study Institute, 1970
• Editors: Earth Sciences , 3 volumes, Barking, 1971, Applied Science Publishers
• Editor with Harold C. Urey : The moon , IAU Symposium on the Moon (Newcastle 1971), Reidel, Dordrecht 1972
• Editor with DH Tarling: Implications of continental drift to the earth sciences , NATO Advanced Study Institute, 1973
• Editor with PA Davies Mechanisms of continental drift and plate tectonics , 1980
• Published in: The Physics of the planets: their origin, evolution, and structure , 1987
• The Earth's Magnetism , Scientific American, September 1955

literature

• Neil Opdycke in Gubbins et al. a. (Editor) Encyclopedia of Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism , Springer 2007
• W. O'Reilly, Runcorn (editor) Magnetism, planetary rotation, and convection in the solar system: retrospect and prospect: in honor of Prof. SK Runcorn , 1985
• HE LeGrand Drifting continents and shifting theories , Cambridge University Press 1988

Web links

• Biography at Columbia University

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Runcorn "Paleomagnetic comparisons between Europe and North America". Proc. Geol. Assoc. Canada, Vol. 8, 1956, pp. 77-85. Collinson, Runcorn Polar wandering and continental drift: evidence from paleomagnetic observations in the United States , Bull. Geolog. Society of America, Vol. 71, 1960, pp. 915-958.
2. ↑ Irving Paleomagnetic and palaeoclimatological aspects of polar wandering , Geofis. Pura. Appl., Vol. 33, 1956, pp. 23-41. Irving was also a Fellow of the Royal Society. Later he was with the Geological Survey of Canada.